Why sell that condo when you can rent it instead?

Some Chicago condominium owners who became accidental landlords during the housing bust now may be saying, like the kid who stumbles in the hall at school, “I meant to do that.”

Forced to hold on to condos that plunged in value during the downturn, some downtown owners leased out the units so they could move to their next address. Now, amid a strong downtown apartment market that has pushed rents up and put more cash in their pockets, many owners are deciding that they like being landlords.

“We were first-time buyers who got a painful education,” said Joshua Swanson, who with his wife, Rachael, were unable to sell their West Loop condo when work took them to New York in 2007. “But it's turning out to be not so bad.”

After renting out the condo, which they bought for about $300,000 in 2005, for $1,900 a month for several years, the Swansons recently signed a new tenant at $2,200 a month. “We were clearing $80 a month,” Mr. Swanson said. “Now it's over $300 a month. Woo-hoo.”

More downtown condo owners inked leases in the second quarter of 2014 than in any prior quarter going back to 2004, according to Appraisal Research Counselors, a Chicago-based consulting firm. The firm reported that 2,008 downtown condominiums were rented out during the quarter, up 11.6 percent from a year earlier.

Because it tracks only condos rented through the multiple-listing service, Appraisal Research does not capture all downtown condo rentals. Units rented through Craigslist or another service wouldn't show up in the firm's report.

The top year so far for condo rentals was 2011, when 6,111 leases were signed downtown, according to Appraisal Research. But with 3,238 condos rented through mid-year, more than the 3,133 rented in the first half of 2011, rental volume is on track to surpass the 2011 total.

Rents are up, too. In downtown condo buildings that are 10 years old or less, rents on a per-square-foot basis rose 24 percent from 2010 to 2013, according to Appraisal Research.

With home prices rising in affluent city neighborhoods, selling has become a more appealing option for many condo owners. But in many cases, “they find out that it hasn't gone up enough yet to get back all their equity, so they'll rent it longer,” said Howard Arbetman, who founded Chicago Condo Rentals Inc. in 2008.

Back then, he said, “my phone rang off the hook” with calls from condo owners whose homes' value had dropped too far for them to stomach selling.

In the past year or so, the swift turnaround in downtown neighborhoods has meant that “a lot of people are getting closer to break even,” he said. But they have multiyear tenants in their condos “and don't want to bother with selling. They can make more on it later.”

Not everyone became a condo landlord by accident. Mohan Mysore and Chandrika Rizal, both physicians in Omaha, Nebraska, paid $460,000 for a 12th-floor condominium at the Metropolitan Tower on Michigan Avenue in 2010, according to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds. They have rented it out and intend to keep it filled with tenants until they both retire, sometime in the next 10 years, Dr. Mysore said.

He expects downtown condos to cost considerably more when he and his wife retire, which made locking in when prices were low a money-saver.

“We think we got a good discount,” Dr. Mysore said, because the developer was cutting prices to move the last units in the building. Now rented at $2,800 a month, the two-bedroom condo facing Grant Park “breaks even,” Dr. Mysore said.

Other owners who weren't able to plan so far ahead now are benefiting “from not having any choice,” said T.J. Rubin, president of Fulton Grace Realty Inc., a firm that launched during the downturn with an emphasis on renting and managing condos for owners who needed to move on. He said that he's had several clients, including the Swansons, recently opt to keep on renting.

They see “that they've got something that is valuable in the marketplace, even if they didn't plan to have it,” he said.